Hale details their new book based on elementary school friendships.
What was the most challenging part of putting this together?
But I didnt use any of their personal stories in it.
Credit: First/Second Books
Id never written directly from my own experiences before.
This book would have been impossible to write if I had been doing it on my own.
And then I hit the jackpot again with the illustrator.
First/Second Books
LeUyen Pham is a genius.
With her visual storytelling combined with my writing, its no longer just my story.
Its hers plus mine, and then it will go out and belong to the readers as well.
Was it easy to come together on this project and collaborate?
What I love most about her is that shes an author with very little ego.
For our graphic novel, the experience is very similar.
Freeing myself from the photos proved very liberating in allowing me to act out the story in drawings.
I feel like not many people write about the trials and tribulations of elementary school.
Was that a factor in your storytelling as well?
HALE:Ive seen in my own kids the same struggles that I had when I was their age.
And hopefully, liked and accepted for who we are.
Elementary school is such a weird time for friendships!
Kids need friends so badly, and yet their worlds are so small.
As we grow older, our worlds get bigger and we have more options, more people.
When theyre not the right fit?
You are alone, or you make do, or you drown.
LeYuen, Shannon wrote this story because it was something she experienced.
Did you have something specific and personal that drew you to the story as well?
PHAM:You know, I had met Shannon long before wed ever worked together.
She was primarily a young adult/fantasy writer, and I was a picture book illustrator through and through.
When I was first given the manuscript forThe Princess in Black, I didnt even read it.
I just told my agent that any script from Shannon was something I would take, sight unseen.
So thats me, too, that you see on the pages.
What do you hope young readers take away from it?
HALE:My goal is really simply to tell an honest story.
What was one piece of advice that you learned when you were young, that youd tell yourself today?
She said, Why didnt you say hi?
She advised me to always say hi and use the persons name if I knew it.
That was freeing advice for me and I lived by it.
And maybe just that basic acknowledgement made someone else feel happier too.
PHAM:When I was a kid, my teachers were really influential on me.
Which was important, because my family didnt really give much value to art.
And while its not advice, really, there was a poem that my English teacher once gave me.
Its from Langston Hughes, and the poem is The Dreamkeeper.
